Crystal Ball

I believe your grandson should focus on the software side of music creation as well as music transfer or conveyance, the way music could be played without speakers. Forward to the past and back to the future, if you will. I would buy those apps, even when they're free.

I'm with Bapu!  let us old (educated) fogey's use staff to compose.  BTW did you know they don't even teach cursive writing in amerikan elementary skools?  I'm aghast!

There are calculators?
 
Man, the world moves too fast for me.

Problem is that every single audience member will also be wearing those VR glasses while looking at you, but seeing Bowie or Presley. Interesting philosophical conundrum.

There's a virtual writing app for that.

Thinking back on some of the impacts of technology on music, pre and post tape era. Advances open new doors for expression, but not without drawbacks. Advances going forward will overall benefit since evolution is the Law, but some collateral damage is part of the equation.
 
Some may remember the advent of MIDI and the war with Roland to get their DCB language accepted. Same cocky battle Protools did with RTAS.  Protools flipped off vst format and stuck with RTAS since they were Protools, ruled he universe and only RTAS will prevail. Went to hell in a handbasket when the musical world called their bluff and Steinberg’s vst format took front stage.
 
Roland did the same thing and banked on DCB to wipe out MIDI. Synths like the Juno 6 were outfitted with DCB announcing the death of MIDI. Bad call. MIDI took front stage and it must have been a bitter pill for Roland to have to sell hardware to convert DCB to MIDI. I have one of the old bugged conversion boxes.
 
MIDI blew everyone away. Crap, you didn’t even have to play anything right or at full speed. Make a mistake, correct it. Can’t figure out a note, go smoke a joint and figure it out later. Then the arp…
 
Read an article that the full blown acceptance of MIDI was carved in stone with the Michael Jackson Thriller tour. Seems the keyboard players showed up with hangovers and couldn’t play anything right. They had dumped such a budget into the tour that everything had to be as close to perfect as possible, or at least controlled. They did all the keyboard tracks in MIDI and then just had to dress up the players, put them behind the keyboards and let them dance around pretending to play. Computer doing everything behind the scenes.
 
Some may remember also the contest on the 40’th anniversary of the Sgt Pepper’s album. Can’t remember who got involved, but some professional heavy weights. Task was to recreate the album with one catch. They had to use only the equipment available at the time, tape 4 track and a couple floor stomps.
 
One group eventually did it after multiple failures, and everyone else tanked.
 
Retrospect analysis was that we became too soft in our reliance on technology to replace a lack of ability. The old school musicians had to have their focus and skills in order to do a complete track once through. 21^st century dudes are used to screwing up after a couple measures and going back to correct notes and errors. Can slop through a 3 minute track and go back to surgically repair the carnage. Hit a sour note, replace it. Sing off key, pitch correct it.
 
Not ****ing about the good old days, just an observance of the give and take payoffs. Seems like we go two steps forward and create a step backward.
 
Emailed all your respected advice to my grandson, and he sends his thanks. Says however I didn’t get his message straight. He was going over effects. Flange, phase, comp, EQ and the rest of the traditionals. He was asking if there is an effect or effects that were missing that he could invent and program for us. Avant concepts. May take a few years, but he is taking requests.
 
John

Okay Fleer, the kid is calling you on this one. Wants to know what an affective effect is. He is okay with the Affector name and assumes it will be an audio plugin. He said he is still within, though transitioning out of the phase of requiring adult guidance, and needs seasoned advice "from old people". Still wanting to know what is missing in the vst arsenal. Cool perspective the more I think about it. And the approach out of the mouth of babes.
 
Was visiting with his Mom for a few days and observing me use my best 4 letter vocabulary struggling with a compressor. I was asked what are the effects that were making me so mad and we had a good run down on everything we expect in a DAW, and the concept of third party plugins.
 
Question still unresolved (and has to be resolved if any of us are going to get his help...)
 
Are there effects outside of the traditional comps and eq's and the like that we would like to have, that we can't get anywhere. What do we dream of as far as an unexplored effect that we don't have yet.
 
He said that if we can give him a better description, when he graduates from engineering school (only about a 10 year wait. Will fly in the blinking of an eye.) The kid will design the plugin and give it to all of us for free. It gets better still. After our talk about DRM strangulation and why I was cursing PACE, he said that he will issue the plug with no authorization blocks, and upgrades for life will be free.
 
What else can we ask for...
 
John

ouch...
 
Whirled Peas... Was a parting mantra for over 12000 of us mechanics working in the Boeing aircraft plant before we all got laid off onto the streets. Sick inside joke at the time, although our wives and kids with stomachs to be fed didn't see the humor.
 
We got to do better than this. A young, impressionable, naive, idealistic virgin mind is trustingly looking toward us petrified dinosaurs for parting inspiration before we croak and can get out of their way.

JohnKenn
Okay Fleer, the kid is calling you on this one. Wants to know what an affective effect is. He is okay with the Affector name and assumes it will be an audio plugin.

Believe it or not, but I wrote my first book on that, way back when. Still available maybe.
Anyway, as an audio plugin, the Affector would have to do much more than any reverb, chorus, flanger, phaser or multi-effect does seasoning our sounds. Those take the musician as their alpha and the audience as their omega. But your grandson's Affector will include the audience as an equally affective factor for its sound creation. It will affect the player as well as the listener in such a way that both experience the same musical nirvana, as both jointly participate in its creation.

Oh yeah.

So true, and confident that the kid is headed in the right direction. Master of Legos before 2, straight A's honor student now. Some of his thoughts on this are quite good. With the whole universe of creative invention and intuition, how come we stopped with maybe 6 or 7 effects. There's got to be number 8 and beyond we haven't thought of yet that would be just as cool and useful as the ones we have settled with.
 
He said not to worry though if we can't think of a new effect class. He'll figure out the next block buster and give it to us for free. Might take awhile, but got faith he can pull it off.

Okay, checking it out. Hey do you really fly those things? Only taxied the small ones around the runway and turned the wrenches for you guys who were up there with the angels.
 
Rocky, with a growing proportion of kids graduation from high school without being able to read and write, political correct injunction to not mention the "G" word in public lest some **** and an army of willing lawyers get offended, so glad to hear that your kid is on the right path.
 
John

On a personal note, after classical music and flute training between ages 7 and 18, I started looking into hardware synths in the eighties, first getting an Alpha Juno 2, next a Korg DS-8, then an Alesis QuadraSynth and later an Alesis Fusion. Kept the two last ones, yet never played them. Dabbled with (electro) acoustic guitars. Got a 25 Anniversary Ovation from my wife as a wedding present and collected a few more, yet nothing fancy. Picked up tradition some thirty years later with a Roland FA and a few keyboard controllers, including Nektar's P6 and NI's Kontrol S49. Still boxed.
Why am I saying this? During that 30 years interlude, I witnessed the industry turn software and, most importantly, I saw that software became more and more affordable as well as professional.
This software evolution is quite incredible. Mere mortals can now achieve for a few hundred bucks what normally costs tens of thousands. If they're up to it.
And that's a huge if. I'm not just talking musical knowledge. I'm talking musical experience, insight and judgment. As we have and cherish all these plugins, the final courtroom is within our head.
So that's where John's grandson could make a difference. Through learning apps. Or software that allows us to first ascertain which musical direction we want to go, and next helps us with selecting the right plugins. Learning by doing.